Christian
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Jesus vs the Bible
“You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God” – Matthew 22:29 I’ve come across a lot of people recently who seem to pit Jesus against the Bible. It seems like this is a growing trend. People say things like, “Jesus is the only Word of God. The
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Is Evolution becoming a religion?
This other day I read Nick Spencer’s article “The big fat lies of evolution” (you’ll have to read it to understand the title). He talks about the way a layperson – not a scientist – casually used an evolutionary mechanism to explain obesity. He concludes: But the use of this narrative [i.e. the evolutionary narrative], by someone
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Thomas Watson and God’s Infinity
As part of my college course this year, I’m studying the Doctrine of God. It’s been great so far, I’ve really enjoyed it. I was doing some reading for the assessment today – Thomas Watson’s “Body of Divinity” was on the list. This is a collection of sermons he preached on the Westminster Assembly’s Catechism,
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Questioning Biblical Christian Pro-Gay Assumptions
I’ve noticed recently there seems to be a trend amongst many Christians who would claim the Bible as their authority of endorsing same-sex relationships. The other day, for example, I was reading about Matthew Vines’ book God and the Gay Christian. Last year, Steve Chalke came out in favour of same-sex marriage, and there have
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Is Atheism Rational?
… or indeed, irrational? Last week I read a very interesting interview with the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga called Is Atheism Irrational? I’d recommend reading it – particularly the last section at the end, which I found fascinating. It’s to do with the belief in naturalism or materialism – i.e. the belief that the natural world
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Sermon: The Wedding Banquet (Luke 14:15-24)
This is the text of a sermon preached at the 9AM service at Christ Chuch Cockfosters this morning. It was part of a series going through ‘Uncover‘, the subtitle of this talk was ‘Go Out’. Unfortunately no audio is available but I stuck pretty much to the script on this one! Hope you enjoy. The
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Marriage and ‘Public Theology’
I’m doing a course at college at the moment called ‘Public Theology’, which is basically about how theology and the public sphere (e.g. politics, society) interact. Earlier this week I did a seminar on marriage, i.e. how the church should engage society on the topic of marriage. As regular readers will know this is something
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The Bible and Clarity
I’ve had a few conversations recently about epistemology (how we know what we know), especially when it comes to knowing what we know about God. People are becoming suspicious of talking about the Bible being ‘clear’ on any particular issue – Rachel Held Evans’ blog post The Bible was ‘clear’… demonstrates pretty well this kind of
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Is Atheism enough to sustain a ‘church’?
According to the news today, the “Sunday Assembly” has split. For those of you who don’t know, the Sunday Assembly is a church-style service, only it’s run by atheists. This is the vision from their website*: The Sunday Assembly is a godless congregation that celebrate life. Our motto: live better, help often, wonder more. Our mission: to help
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Happy Christmas
I’d just like to wish all my loyal blog readers a happy Christmas. May it be peaceful and refreshing and full of good cheer! This term at college I am going to be studying the book of Hebrews, which talks a lot about the supremacy of Christ. I’d like to quote from the opening verses,